Books for the Literary Zaddy in Your Life

Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Teams of hit men in the Philippines. And the worldwide, decade-long quest to bring it all down. The Mastermind is the incredible true story of the rise, betrayal, and fall of Paul Le Roux, the reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who built himself into an international merchant of painkillers, mayhem, and terror.

The bestselling author of Bird Box, which spawned the Netflix sensation of the same name, is back with another horrifying, tantalizing thriller. Boys are being trained at one school for geniuses, girls at another. Neither knows the other exists—until now. In Inspection, J is one of twenty-six boy geniuses at a school deep in the forest, bread as a prodigy, isolated from the rest of the world. His life at school is all he knows—and all he’s allowed to know. Meanwhile, on the other side of the forest, K is in a school similar school for girls. What happens when the two start asking questions? When they begin investigating the secrets of their schools? And finally, when they meet each other?

Korede is tired of doing favors for her sister, Ayoola. Cleaning up blood. Clearing enough space for a body in the trunk of her car. Keeping Ayoola from posting food pics on Instagram when she’s supposed to be mourning her “missing” boyfriend—the third one in a row who’s wound up dead. Now, Korede has fallen for the picture-perfect doctor at the hospital where she works…and he’s asking for Ayoola’s number. Sharp and witty, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut, My Sister, The Serial Killer, is one deliciously deadly sister act.

Selected by Rolling Stone and Pitchfork as one of the best books of 2018, this is the long-awaited memoir of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. His songs have been endlessly analyzed and celebrated, but Tweedy has seldom opened up about his life and his creative process. Until now. In Let’s Go So We Can Get Back, Tweedy discusses his childhood, his family, and his musical beginnings, along with the other people, places, and experiences that created the musical genius adored by music fans around the world.

From the telegraph and the railroad, to radio and flight and sneakers and the Internet, American history can be told through the lens of innovation, ambition and, inevitably, capitalism. That’s what Bhu Srinivasan does, with accessible and exhilarating storytelling in Americana, a four-hundred-year journey through American enterprise, which reveals fascinating origins and unexpected connections among all the nation’s Next Big Things.

If you’ve enjoyed avocados, mangoes, kale, or seedless grapes, chances are, you owe thanks to David Fairchild, the nineteenth-century botanist who traveled the world and introduced thousands of crops to the American plate. The Food Explorer illuminates Fairchild’s adventures (and misadventures) from India to Chile to China, as he overcame disease and arrest to transform America into the most diverse food system ever created.

Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings and winner of the Man Booker Prize, introduces his stunning first novel in the Dark Star trilogy. Black Leopard, Red Wolf combines myth, fantasy, and history in a story that explores what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Hailed as an African Game of Thrones, James offers an epic novel that defies categorization and defies you to put it down.

In Nothing Is Lost, readers gain unprecedented access to the best work of the late Ingrid Sischy, who is hailed as one of the great chroniclers of art, fashion, and fame. This collection of thirty-five essays, many of which were published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, includes masterful profiles of figures from Nicole Kidman and Kristen Stewart, to Calvin Klein, Jeff Koons, and Miuccia Prada.

A national bestseller selected as a best book of 2018 by NPR, The New York Times Book Review, and the Wall Street Journal, this is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron. Written by the award-winning journalist who broke and, despite threats from the disgraced company, pursued the story to the end, Bad Blood tells the inside tale of a multibillion-dollar biotech startup whose breathtaking rise gave way to its shocking collapse.

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Say Nothing, by award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, is the bitter and mesmerizing account of a notorious murder in Northern Ireland, its aftermath, and its repercussions within a violence guerilla war and beyond.

Fans of Han Kang and Patrick deWitt will be spellbound by the latest from Un-Su Kim, whom The Guardian lauds as “the Korean Henning Mankell.” Named one of the most anticipated crime books of 2019 by CrimeReads and Lit Hub, Kim’s latest, The Plotters, is a gripping, action-filled novel about a hired assassin who defies his duties and seeks to uncover a grand conspiracy.

Author of Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84, international phenomenon Haruki Murakami is back with one of the best books of the year, according to The Washington Post, NPR, and Esquire. Across seven tales, told with wry humor and pathos, Murakami’s national bestseller invites readers into the lives of lovesick doctors, ex-boyfriends, Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, and other men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone.

Milo has died in a car accident. He’s been killed by a catapult. He’s lived—and died—9,995 times…and has yet to get it “right.” Now he has just five more chances to answer all the big questions, become one with everyone, and fall into the arms of his one true love, Suzie—or, as you might know her, Death. A darkly absurd epic love story, Reincarnation Blues is at times tear-jerking and other times laugh-out-loud funny, kind of like life itself.

The Wire launched the careers of Idris Elba, Dominic West, and Michael B. Jordan. It’s used as university text in subjects ranging film theory to criminal justice to sociology. It is arguably the greatest TV show of all time, and finally, there’s a book to do it justice. All the Pieces Matter is the definitive oral history of The Wire, as told by the actors, writers, and directors who created it.